Research and development of and on micro and nano sized objects and systems have received considerable interest the last few decades and have accelerated the last decade during the advent of nanotechnology. Doing work on objects of this scale set demands on the instrumentation and techniques used in order to be able to manipulate, assemble, measure and do testing on these objects. Several different measuring devices have been developed in order to do some of these types of activities, often instrumentation is designed for specific purposes, for instance the atomic force microscope is used for obtaining images of force interactions between a surface and a probe of surfaces down to atomic resolution at it's best, scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy are both used for obtaining images using electron beams, tensile instrumentation are used for measuring mechanical properties of material and so on. Apart from a few exceptions these types of activities are not combined into one instrumentation, for instance Nanofactory Instruments have add on equipment for doing scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), AFM or similar techniques in situ of a TEM.
There is a large need of being able to measure different types of physical properties while at the same time imaging the objects in order to better understand processes involved, further it is of interest to use the same techniques eventually in production line systems and processes. The general solution is therefore to measure the different properties of interest using different types of stand alone equipment on different locations in a laboratory for instance. This puts a burden on the user since there is a large risk that the sample under inspection is altered during passage from one instrument to another. It can even be destroyed or moved in position rendering measurements impossible.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a device and a system for nano or micro sized objects which provide access to measurement and manipulation in situ of a transmission electron microscope.